Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (59 page)

“As I said, I
vaguely
remember it, but go on.”

“No need. You just answered my question.”

“What question?”

“Whether you solved the case or not.”

Dan hesitated. “I never found Richard Phillips.”

Ed was silent for a while. Then he burst out laughing. “You ‘vaguely’ remember it yet you have the boy’s name on the tip of your tongue.”

“I remember some things better than others.”

“But you didn’t find him?”

“I didn’t find Richard Phillips, no.”

“I wondered. Because that was the only case where you ever showed a ‘no return’ on a file. No clues, no possible leads. It just didn’t add up. Not for the unshakable Dan Sharp.”

“You can’t win ’em all, Ed.”

“I guess not. Okay, I just wondered.”

“Should I ask why?”

Ed sighed. “I’m not supposed to say anything, but there is a possibility that somehow that boy’s case is connected to the current investigation.”

Dan felt a tingle. “In what way?”

“That’s all I can say for now, Daniel. You’re not the only one who keeps secrets.”

“Point taken.”

Dan was beginning to feel bad for not telling Ed the truth. He thought about it while the line hummed between them. Downstairs, the front door opened. Ked had returned with Ralph. A leash tinkled, claws scampered across the floor.

“Do you remember how old that kid was, Ed?”

“No. I don’t have that kind of memory. How old was he?”

“He turned fifteen just after the case came to us. His birthday is the day before Ked’s.”

“Interesting coincidence. So?”

“So … Ked’s birthday is next month. Ask me in a month and I might remember the case a little more clearly.”

Ed guffawed. “Meaning when the boy is sixteen and legal. You
do
know where he is!”

“Gotta go, Ed. Supper’s on the table.”

He put down the phone then picked it up again immediately.
What are the chances?
he asked himself, pulling out the card for the chief of police. He stared at the small white rectangle with its neat blue lines. All that law and order nestled in the palm of his hand. He started dialling.

When Dan came back downstairs he found Trevor seated at the table with a knowing look on his face. Ked drummed his fingers on the tabletop and looked off in the distance. Dan glanced up at the clock: he’d been considerably more than five minutes.

“You’re incorrigible,” Trevor said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, and he’s late, too,” Ked added.

Dan tried to look chagrined. “That’s pretty much the same conclusion Ed Burch just drew about me. Sorry, I was a bit longer than I’d expected.”

Trevor indicated the empty place. “Sit. Nothing got burned, but the pasta’s going to be soggy.”

“Does working for Jags Rohmer mean you’re going to become completely unreliable from now on, Dad?” Ked asked.

Dan turned to him. “Just remember:
Father Knows Best
. If you can do that, all will be well.”

Ked harrumphed.

Trevor set their plates on the table. Ked dug in, all but wolfing down his food. Dan picked up his fork then looked away. A streetcar went by on Queen, making the walls tremble.

Trevor waited for him to begin. Dan was lost in thought.

“Want to talk about it?”

Dan looked over. “What?”

“I’m not prying, but you seem preoccupied.”

“Yeah, it’s all right.” He speared a piece of rigatoni and gulped it down. “I called Ed. My former boss. Ed didn’t know about Jags. In fact, if you can believe it, Ed doesn’t even know who he is apart from ‘some old rocker.’ Personally, I find it hard to believe that anyone over the age of ten cannot have an idea who Jags Rohmer is, but that’s beside the point. Ed lives in his own world anyway, so I’ll leave him to it.”

Trevor held up a carafe. Ruby red. “Wine?”

“Yes, please,” Ked piped up. “It will make up for the unconscionable wait.”

Dan looked over at his son. “‘Unconscionable’?”

Ked shrugged. “Incorrigible, unconscionable — what’s the difference?”

“About the same difference as between wine and root beer. Your drink’s in the fridge, by the way. Help yourself, buddy.”

Ked got up and went to the fridge.

Trevor filled his glass. Dan took a gulp of wine without tasting it.

“Where was I? Oh, yes — Jags Rohmer and Ed Burch. So there’s that. Then I …”

Trevor put up a hand. “Wait a minute. There’s what?”

Dan shook his head, clearing the cobwebs. “He didn’t know anything about my being hired by Jags. But Jags told me Ed had recommended me to two of the cops I met this morning. Ed didn’t feel he’d said anything to that effect.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know. It’s just odd, isn’t it? The person who hires you says you’ve been recommended by a friend and the friend says nothing of the sort happened.”

“Yes, it’s odd.”

“So then I phoned the chief of police …”

Trevor and Ked caught each other’s glance.

“What?” Dan asked.

Trevor shook his head. “First Jags Rohmer and now the chief of police? Where have you been hanging out lately?”

“Yeah. Take us with you next time, Dad,” Ked said then bent his head and began shovelling pasta into his mouth.

“Anyway,” Dan continued, spearing a stalk of asparagus with his fork. He brought it to his mouth then put it down again. “I was shocked when I was actually put through to his private line. It’s like I had a magic pass or something. All he could tell me is that he and his crew had a meeting with Jags and somehow my name came up as a possible bodyguard for hire.”

“So it should be all right then. Shouldn’t it?”

“I guess. I gather Jags was insistent on wanting some sort of protection and they weren’t about to provide it for him, so they eased him off on me. At least that’s the sense I got. I know Ed Burch provided some impeccable references for me, but he wouldn’t recommend me as a bodyguard. It’s just not something I’ve ever done before.”

Trevor took stock of this. “When do you start?”

Dan thought back to his conversation with Jags. “I don’t know. He never said.” He finally tucked a bite of pasta into his mouth.

Trevor cocked an eyebrow at him. “It all sounds a bit sketchy to me.”

Ked sat back, regarding Dan over a frothy glass of root beer. “To me, too.” He shrugged. “But
Father Knows Best
, right?”

“That’s right,” Dan told him. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

Trevor passed the basket of rolls.

“Anyway, as long as I get paid, it doesn’t matter,” Dan said, reaching for a roll and never thinking for a moment how much he might regret having said that in the days to come.

A week went by. Dan heard nothing further from the police department about the murder investigation. He called Darlene Hillary one morning, murmuring vague reassurances that things were pending. They both knew it meant nothing. Dan wished he hadn’t said he’d try to help. A lover’s promise whispered in the heat of passion, gone forever afterward.

Jags, on the other hand, was true to his word. He wasn’t overly demanding of Dan’s time or resources. They met midweek to discuss Dan’s salary and his duties. None of what Jags proposed sounded pressing, so Dan began to relax. The most worrying thing was Jags’ confession about his behaviour.

“I apologize in advance,” he told Dan. The voice was gravelly, like he’d been up singing dirges all night. “But you may from time to time have to put up with my whims.”

“‘Whims’?”

“Moods. Hissy fits. Don’t take offence. I piss everyone off, sooner or later.”

“Ah, you mean that bitchy rock star stuff. Are you saying you want me to put you in your place from time to time?”

Jags cocked a shaggy eyebrow at him. “Something like that.”

“No problem.”

He handed Dan a complicated-looking set of keys, like something a medieval monk might remove from his cassock as he went about taking last confessions from dying prisoners. “For my penthouse,” he said, reciting the address of a well-known luxury condominium. “It’ll save you having to get past security. And believe me, you’d rather not deal with them if you don’t have to.”

“Man-eaters?”

“Eastern European ex-Stasi. Very efficient. Very deadly. Just like a pack of Rottweilers.” He nodded to the ring. “There’s an additional key on there. It’s for my house on Algonquin Island.”

“Nice.”

Dan pictured the reclusive slip of land fronting the harbour, one in a chain of islands protecting the city from offshore squalls in this century and from marauding Americans in earlier times.

“You probably won’t need to use it,” Jags continued, “but you have it anyway. I’ll write the address down for you with a map, because otherwise you’d never find it.”

For the most part, Jags seemed to want Dan around for public appearances. To date, that had consisted of accompanying him on a shopping spree at Holt Renfrew. Despite the warnings about his temperament, Jags didn’t treat Dan as an underling so much as a companion.
He even deferred to Dan’s taste in clothes, wanting his
opinion on a Zegna blazer and a silk Armani shirt, along with a pair of six-hundred-dollar Ferragamo loafers. Dan okayed the purchases then directed him to Farley Chatto, one of his favourite designers. (
Hey! Everyone needs a little Farley in their life
ran the designer’s
slogan.) Donny had recently turned him onto the Regina native, who had designed for Elton John among others.
Not that Dan could afford a Farley any more than he could the Italian designers. Nor did he have much to dress up for apart from the occasional funeral, but he still enjoyed wearing homegrown chic. For his part, Jags was suitably impressed with the whimsical, sexy designs. He held up a jacket with silk satin detailing.
A mere $3000.

“I like it,” he said.

After that, he routinely asked for Dan’s opinion.

“I draw the line at underwear,” Dan warned.

He was beginning to feel as if he’d been brought
on a shopping spree by his best friend. His very rich best friend. No one approached Jags directly, not even to ask for an autograph, though he was recognized several times that afternoon. The crowd seemed intimidated by him.
Of course
, Dan thought.
Torontonians don’t approach celebrities. We stand and gawk from afar
. He was amused by their reticence, knowing that in LA or New York, Jags would be deluged with requests for autographs and photographs, even donations to improbable causes. The dreary side of being rich and recognizable.

The only difficult moment came when Dan tried to stop a young woman from taking Jags’ photograph with her cellphone. He got a sense of how celebrities must feel like animals in a zoo, with people turning to stare at the exotica, never leaving you alone for a moment. Always feeling you needed to be on guard,
to look your best. Always being
on
. You would hate it,
he realized.

The woman looked terrified the instant Dan turned to her. Though he wasn’t acting in an official capacity, and nothing about his dress suggested security, his body language said he was in charge.

He wagged a finger, blocking her view of the singer,
who was buried up to the elbows in a sale table of cashmere sweaters like a kid bent on finding free candy. The woman’s eyes widened, darting nervously around as though she might need to escape if he became dangerous.

“No photographs, please,” Dan said calmly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, pocketing the phone. “It’s really him, isn’t it?”

Her face was pink, her breathing shallow and quick. She had all the symptoms of love at first sight.

Dan nodded. “It really is.”

“Please tell him I love him,” she gushed. “I always have.”

“Right.”

“Tell him we’re all waiting for his next album.”

She continued to stare, as though he were the doorway to the universe where all the fabulous people like Jags Rohmer lived.

“Tell him he should do a duet with Prince …”

“Will do. Thanks. Let’s let the man have some peace.”

“Sorry. Yeah, sure.”

He watched her slink away in the direction of ladies lingerie, an overgrown teenager stalking her heartthrob. Maybe her next purchase would reflect her true desires: a discreet pair of black undies that she would willingly discard for him and him alone. Who knew, but she might return in five minutes asking for an address, somewhere to mail them to him, only slightly used.

Throughout all of this, Jags ignored the scene, acting as though none of it concerned him. Only later did it occur to Dan that Jags had almost no contact with other people. Zilch. He never spoke of family or friends; no one called his cellphone. How was it that someone so well-known could be so isolated from the world?

They left the store, exiting into gloom and merging with a stream of traffic under a nighttime sky that compressed the heat and held the city hostage in its relentless grip.

Eleven

Blue Mountains

The heat wave lasted two full weeks before breaking
over the course of several spectacular storms that trooped through the city, leaving considerable damage behind. The garage fires subsided. No one thought of them. The Canadian National Exhibition had started: Ferris wheels, trade shows, cotton candy, and a licence to get silly. Toronto turned its collective mind to fun.

Mornings were cooler now, which meant for Dan that the day started on an easier footing. Life began to feel more under control. The renovations were going well and the pay for celebrity babysitting Jags was helping him relax.

On Saturday, he drove Trevor to the airport to catch an early flight to BC where he hoped to tackle some unfinished business and put his house up for sale. If all went well, Dan reasoned, Trevor would be ready to step into his new life entirely when he returned.

Ked had gone to spend the weekend at his mother’s. Dan returned to an empty house, apart from one yellow dog with a questioning look on its face.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Dan told him. “You’re wondering why the fun people always leave while the Grinch stays home? Is that it, boy?”

Ralph silently wagged his tail.